What's changing

I started building ChessMint last fall, after realizing then that there was a bit of a gap in the market for simplified/streamlined/automated training material generation, something I myself needed for coaching. ChessMint has been free while being built and improved. However, it is now at a point of being a genuinely useful tool used regularly by a growing number of coaches and ambitious improvers. Maintaining and further improving it as a solo developer takes real time and effort (as well as money; after all, hosting the site and the database is not without costs, neither is the domain). Moving to a paid model is what makes the project sustainable long-term. Thank you for understanding!

The price is not yet set in stone, but it won't be more than a few € a month.

What happens to your existing account and projects

Nothing disappears or gets deleted. Your saved projects and folders will still be there.

There will be a transition period of maybe a month (details to follow) during which you can render and download your saved projects so you can keep your work even if you decide not to purchase a subscription.

Why not keep a free tier?

I don't want ChessMint to become the typical freemium product with very limited free functionality and a locked premium layer on top.

It's a specialized tool that does one unique thing very well. The target audience is probably just a small percentage of the chess world, but those who do benefit from using ChessMint get a lot of value from it, which makes me think that a watered-down free version wouldn't make much sense.

A free trial will give users the option of trying ChessMint and testing the functionality for a while before committing.

Questions

If anything is unclear or you have concerns about your projects or data, or just want to give feedback or make suggestions, feel free to reach out to me at contact@chessmint.app.

---Jakob